


like the totally mellow downward dog

by robpatFF



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Does Yoga, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 03:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1925862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robpatFF/pseuds/robpatFF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seems stupid now, to head back to the loft with Peter, to wait for Braeden to send word of something, anything. It seems stupid for Derek to be worried about shit that he can’t fucking control.</p><p>The woman smiles at his apparent indecision.</p><p>“We sell yoga pants,” she says, smiling. “Probably in your size.”</p><p>Derek goes inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the totally mellow downward dog

**Author's Note:**

> I like Derek Hale, and in theory I like yoga, so. This is a product of those two things. I don't own anything, these characters are not mine, disclaimer, etc. 
> 
> I just like Derek doing really calming things. Like yoga. Or knitting. Maybe becoming a Scrabble enthusiast.
> 
> Also, this is set in some vague, immediate future after episode 4.03 (Muted), so minimal spoilers for that.

The thing is, what Peter says sticks with Derek. Not the job part, not the vitriol Peter employs with everything he says. It’s the _What do you think I’m going to do then?_ that hammers around Derek’s head for days after, suspended between wondering if Braeden can be trusted and staring into the dark, seeing Kate’s glowing green eyes staring back. 

_What do you think I’m going to do?_ , and Peter meant without the money, but Derek can’t think of an answer for it at all. 

\------

The thing is, what Braeden says sticks too. Derek blinks into the mirror as a human first, sees human-colored eyes look back. Sees the same eyes he’s had all his life blinking right back at him. He shifts, recognizes the hair that sprouts on the side of his face, the ridges of his brow. 

His blinks, and doesn’t recognize the yellow. 

He’s grown used to the blue. He didn’t look in the mirror, clenched his eyes shut over any reflective surface for months after Paige, when he felt the life slip out of her, her body going limp and void in his arms. He remembers Peter staring at him, remembers seeing blue reflected back. It took Derek a long time to get used to the blue. To look in the mirror and not flinch away.

(He likes to forget the red. The red wasn’t his, should have never been his. The red was reckless and dangerous and _fatal_. The red cost him his betas, nearly cost him Cora. The red reminds him of death and fear and desperation. It doesn’t hold the warmth it did when he was younger, when red meant protection and safety and _his mom_.

The red means death.)

They say the true nature of a werewolf is reflected in their eyes. Derek’s flash an unfamiliar and unwanted yellow. They flash like lasting traces of Kate, like burning flesh and ash and smoke that lingers and stings. 

It’s hard to know what he’s going to do when he doesn’t even know who he _is_ anymore.

\-----

There’s this place in town. Stuck between a maternity shop and a knock-off Hallmark. The sign in the window says _Froyoga_ , and Derek stands on the sidewalk one Thursday, staring inside. It smells clean, like lingering incense and polished wood. The front windows are huge, and Derek can see the mats laid out in the studio, the stereo system in the back. 

“Are you coming in?” a woman says. She’s tall and loose, shaking out her limbs as she sticks her head out of the front entrance. “Class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes though.” She looks him up and down, one eyebrow raising incredulously. “And I don’t know how flexible you’ll be in those jeans.”

Derek blinks at her.

It’s a Thursday, mid-morning, and he’d come out to get milk. It seems so stupid now, to be worried about restocking the fridge when he’d been de-aged a few weeks ago and had to be dragged out of the desert by his rag-tag pseudo-pack. It seems stupid now, to be worried about _milk_ , when Kate has changed something about Derek’s nature, has changed something _inside_ of him, and he doesn’t fucking know what.

It seems stupid now, to head back to the loft with Peter, to wait for Braeden to send word of something, anything. It seems stupid for Derek to be worried about shit that he can’t fucking control.

The woman smiles at his apparent indecision.

“We sell yoga pants,” she says, smiling. “Probably in your size.”

Derek goes inside.

\-----

“So, what,” Isaac says, voice tinny through the speakers of Derek’s laptop. “She changed your eye color? That’s it?”

Derek breathes in through his nose, legs straining against the stretch of the downward dog. His arms tremble with the effort, the good kind of tremble, the kind that makes his blood pump and clears his head and doesn’t precede fear and injury and blood. 

He counts and holds the position until 10, then 15, then 20, at first just because he can, and then because he can’t stop the way his lips twitch when Isaac sighs impatiently. “You’re forgetting the part where she made me a teenager again,” Derek says, rolling up slowly and out of the pose. “That was kind of important.”

He doesn’t have to look at the screen to know Isaac is rolling his eyes. “Scott told me all about that,” he says. “Said you were pretty cute back in the day.”

 _Back in the day_ , Derek mouths silently. 

“But whatever,” Isaac goes on. His voice echoes a little, a product of the tentative Skype connection and the emptiness of the little Parisian apartment Argent’s got them holed up in. 

(“It’s not weird,” Isaac says, when Derek glances pointedly behind Isaac’s head.

“It’s a little weird,” Derek pushes, and Isaac makes an irritated noise at the back of his throat and moves his laptop to the little balcony outside.)

“So she changed your eyes. Is that important?”

Derek can picture snapping at Isaac, spitting _idiot_ at him through sharpened fangs and flashing his eyes. He’s not an Alpha anymore, but Isaac still feels like his Beta, still feels like the closest tentative reach of pack Derek has without Cora here. Derek could probably still make him cower, could probably still growl viciously enough to cut, even through a shitty video connection.

It’s a lot of work though, especially when Derek is trying to keep his core engaged, his left leg held straight and steady, while his right bends slowly, his foot resting against the jut of the opposite knee.

“Tree pose,” Derek says instead, counting to 15 again in his head. 

“ _Eyes_ ,” Isaac prompts. “What the fuck.”

“Your true nature is reflected in your eyes,” Derek intones, chest rising and falling in steady, measured bursts. He lowers his foot, brings down and crosses his right leg over the left and bends his knees. 

It hurts. It’s a good hurt.

“She changed the nature of who I am,” he says. “Or she tried to. I feel--” He blinks, closes his eyes. He breathes through the ache in his legs, the tremble of his abs. “I feel like she changed my center. Changed my purpose. I don’t know.” _Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen_ , and Derek breathes. In. Out.

Isaac hums. Derek can hear the faint tapping of a pen against the metal patio table, can hear the scratch of ink against paper. “What are you doing?”

“Writing Scott a postcard,” Isaac says absently. “Calls and texts are expensive, you know?” He lifts his head up sharply, mouth curving into a cutting grin. “Or maybe you don’t, millionaire.”

 _Thirty_ , Derek counts, and releases the pose, feels his muscles throb in relief. 

“I’m gonna send Stiles these really awful chocolates I found at this cafe,” Isaac continues. “Should be funny.”

“Why?” Derek grunts. He lists to the left, arm at a ninety degree angle as he reaches down towards the floor. His right leg stands out straight and heavy on the other side. _Half-moon_ , he thinks, feels the tension bleed out of his bones. 

“Because Stiles is a _dick_ ,” Isaac stresses. “And so am I; that’s why it’s funny, Derek.”

Derek hums. He stares at the gaping hole in the wall of the loft, centers himself. Steadies himself. Counts.

“Is that what the yoga’s about?” Isaac asks suddenly. “Finding your center and all that bullshit?”

Derek snaps his fangs lazily, the movement jarring him out his count. He rolls out of the pose early, lowers himself to the floor and prepares to wind down.

“Maybe,” he says, voice muffled in his yoga mat. It’s neon green. _Vitality_ , the girl at the studio had said it meant. It gave Derek a headache the first three days. “It gives me something to do.”

“Helps you focus,” Isaac guesses, and Derek shrugs down into the mat, forehead resting against the rubbery, smooth material. His knees are pulled into his chest, palms spread out behind him, and he feels--safe, like this. Feels pulled together and warm and calm. 

He loses time like that, eyes closed, breathing slowed against the thrum of his pulse and the sweat sticking to his skin. He loses track of the usual, unrivaled intensity of his thoughts until the only thing he knows are the numbers in his head, the quiet hum of his breathing, and steady slide of Isaac’s pen across his postcard. 

It’s maybe minutes, maybe an hour, when Isaac says, “Hey, did you want a postcard?”, and Derek unfurls, comes back to himself. Flashes his eyes and feels the answering pull low in his gut.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

\-----

Derek is mid-headstand when Scott pulls the grate door of the loft open. He smells like sweat and cheap soap, like the power he still doesn’t really understand that flows heady and strong in his veins. Stiles trails in after him, and Derek is still surprised at the muted energy he carries with him now, the stillness that wasn’t quite there before. 

“Isaac sent me a postcard,” Scott says, frowning. “But it was all about _you_.”

“He sent me these awesome chocolates,” Stiles adds. “Maybe they were supposed to be for Scott.”

Derek can’t really roll his eyes when he’s upside down, can’t really bring himself to feel much annoyance when all the blood’s rushing to his head like this, when he has to focus on keeping himself straight and steady, his core tight.

Scott comes to stand in front of him. Derek stares at his calves, the bony jut of his ankles. “Hey, dude,” Scott says belatedly, and Derek hums back, counts to fifteen. 

“Are my legs straight?” he asks, and he feels the warm pressure of Scott’s palms, the rhythmic thrum of his heartbeat. 

Thirty, and Derek lowers himself out of the pose, blinks as the blood comes rushing back down out of his head. Stiles and Scott are staring at him, and Derek stares back before he rolls into his back and lifts his legs up. 

“How is that fair,” Stiles wonders down at him. “Your face doesn’t even get red, dude!”

Scott elbows him out of the way and looks down at Derek, his face distorted from the angle. They both listen to Stiles poke around for a bit, touching everything in sight before he disappears into the kitchen. “So,” Scott starts, and Derek sighs.

He lowers his legs. He could finish here, in corpse pose like this, until his muscles stopped feeling like liquid jelly and the calm, muted feeling yoga leaves gave way to something more functional. 

But Derek still has ten minutes left in his allotted yoga session, and Scott’s an Alpha, will eventually be a great one, but he’s not _Derek’s_. 

(“Stick to your yoga schedule,” Allegra says, when Derek tells her doing yoga in a room full of young mothers and college students makes him anxious. “Warm up, full intensity, cool down. Sticking to your schedule is essential to your center.”

“My center,” Derek repeats. “Yes.”

“Come back to change out your mat every so often.” She smiles, glances pointedly behind Derek. “And if you need another pair of yoga pants. Don’t be selfish with the view, you know?”)

Derek thinks he wants yellow for his mat next time. It’ll motivate him to stretch with the sunrise, feel the warmth on his back as he pulls at his strength.

“So,” Scott says again, his sneaker toeing at the edge of Derek’s mat. 

Derek frowns. “Shoes off,” he says. “Socks too.”

“ _Why_?”

Derek sits up straight, puts his fingers over his stomach and pulls his ankles in towards his body for butterfly pose. “No one does yoga in socks.”

He counts up to twelve before he hears Scott shove off his sneakers and socks. He shifts carefully on the mat, gives Scott enough room to mimic the pose next to him. Derek squints his eyes open, watches Scott frown at the stretch, then at Derek. 

“Breathe,” Derek reminds him. So Scott does, and Derek does, and eventually Derek finds enough calm to say, “It’s like she stole my anchor,” and trusts that Scott will understand.

Scott jolts a little, almost coming out of the stretch, but they still have ten seconds, and Derek has a _schedule_. “Shit, man,” Scott says, but he somehow knows to keep his voice down. “So, what? Can you still control yourself on the full moon?”

Derek feels the small tug of irritation, low and burning. He tilts forward in the stretch, listens for Scott doing the same. He pushes his arms forward, pushes his fingers as much into the stretch as they’ll go. The wood floor feels cool on his forehead.

“Not that anchor,” he says, finally. “Like, the thing that keeps me balanced. Keeps me focused.”

Scott’s noise of comprehension is muffled by the floor, how his t-shirt hangs against his face. “Isaac said you were trying to find your chi.”

“Isaac doesn’t know shit,” Derek rumbles, and he mourns the ache of the stretch when he pulls up, comes out of the pose. “This helps. It keeps me centered.”

Time’s almost up, and Derek drops into child’s pose out of habit. It grounds him. He can feel the wood under his forehead, his knees solid and strong under his body. He can hear Scott’s steady breathing next to him, the warmth when he moves to mimic Derek’s position. He can feel the change in energy when Stiles comes back into the room, his disbelief when he mutters, “What the hell,” and collapses on the couch to watch them. 

Derek breathes. In. Out. Grounds himself with this place and these people. He counts. 

\-----

Braeden sends _two weeks_ the morning Derek masters crane pose. 

The rising sun streams through the huge loft windows, and Derek blinks through his sleepy haze and focuses, his knees digging into the back of his arms. 

“Two more weeks for what?” Stiles asks. He smells like tea leaves, bitter and sharp and somehow still watered down. Derek threw all the coffee out of the kitchen three weeks ago and hasn’t seen Peter since. 

Stiles huffs into his mug. “Someone’s keeping secrets.”

Derek stares at the edge of the sofa he’s sitting on. There’s a stain from something, could be food, could be blood. He keeps it in his line of sight, closes his eyes when his abs jump from the strain. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll find out in two weeks, I guess,” he says in between deep, shaking breaths. _fourteen, fifteen, sixteen_. 

“I tried yoga once,” Stiles says. His knee jiggles, once, twice, then falls eerily still. “Back when my mom was trying to find ways to treat my ADHD without the medicine, you know?” 

Derek’s back starts to ache from the stretch, but he nods his head once, and Stiles continues. 

“She enrolled me in this class and everything. Twice a week after school.” He laughs, and it sounds tired, matches the bruises he had under his eyes when he knocked on Derek’s door this morning.

(“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and Derek squints at him through the first few hints of sunlight. “Scott said you’d be up for your sunrise yoga-chi.”

“You’re mixing up two different things.”

Stiles pushes past him, fingers running through his hair. “So can I stay, or what? Just ‘til I have to leave for school.”

Derek stares at him, the way his fingers tap against each other. Takes in the slight pull of darkness that surrounds him, that tugs at Derek before it retreats back into Stiles’ body to lie dormant for a few more minutes.

“Crane pose,” Derek decides.

It’s difficult and complicated, and Derek focuses on keeping his arms up and steady rather than the nightmares still playing in the shadows behind his own eyes, rather than the slight, sleepless hitch in Stiles’ breath.)

“Didn’t work, though,” Stiles says. “My instructor said I lacked all forms of focus. Guess the Nogitsune proved her ass wrong, right? I am the focus fucking master.”

Derek drops out of the pose. 

“Stiles,” he says. The sun is up, and Derek has about five good minutes to lie in child’s pose and forget fucking everything for a while. “Shut up.”

“Right.”

“And take off your shoes.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “But see, I’m not doing yoga, is the thing.”

Derek settles himself on the mat, gets his knees up under him and feels the ache in his muscles like coming home. “Like this,” he says, and Stiles follows.

Derek leans forward slowing, each inch straining his back, his arms, his core. Stiles’s heartbeat settles next to him, both of them pressing forward on the mat, palms flat as they skid over the floor. Derek presses his forehead against the floor and breathes out, tension bleeding out of him like an open wound. 

Derek gets five good minutes in, five glorious, beautiful minutes before his alarm beeps. He comes out of the pose with a sigh, blinking at the warm sun that leaks into the loft, warms his face, his neck.

Stiles takes the mug with him when he leaves for school. He mutters a soft, muted _thanks_ as Derek rolls up his mat.

\-----

“What am I supposed to be feeling exactly?” Isaac asks again. 

Derek doesn’t look over at his screen, but he can still catch Isaac’s labored breathing through the shitty wifi connection.

“Calm,” Scott says, from next to Derek. They’re halfway through upward facing dog and Derek’s arms are trembling. “I think quiet, too, but.”

Isaac makes an offended noise, but he manages to get the pose, _finally_ , shaking his curls back from his face as he does so. “Et tu, Scott?”

“I think relaxed,” Kira murmurs. Kira has been quiet all morning. Kira can do a perfect handstand scorpion pose. Kira brought Derek a new meditation CD. Kira is Derek’s _favorite_. “Like, centered.”

Derek hums in agreement, breathes through his nose. 

“You all look stupid,” Stiles offers from where he’s leaned against the windowsill. “So maybe that.”

They switch to a bridge pose, and Derek stares hard at that hole in the wall. Maybe he’ll get it fixed. Kira counts softly under her breath so Derek doesn’t have to, and Scott and Isaac both follow, muscles trembling, pulses steady and thumping and constant.

They breathe through the movements, count through the movements, limbs stretching and straining under the weight of their own strength. Derek hides a smile when twenty minutes later Isaac declares he’s fucking done with this shit, and Derek listens to the sounds of a coffee machine come to life through his laptop speakers. 

“Almost done?” Kira asks quietly, and Derek nods, comes out of the lotus and slides into the familiar movement of child’s pose.

“Oh,” Stiles says. “I like this one, move over,” and Scott makes room on his own mat for him.

Somewhere in the loft Derek’s phone goes off with the message _I’ve got some information, you think you can handle it?_ that he won’t see until later.

Right now, his muscles are relaxing against the floor, his knees bound under him. His fingers stretch in front of him, slide against the wood grain until they can’t anymore. Scott and Kira and Stiles breathe next to him, in a smooth, slow tandem, bones creaking under the strain. Isaac is quiet through the computer. 

Derek counts. Breathes. 

He feels centered. 

\-----


End file.
